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Back Up or Image?

blackstone

Posted 22 December 2006 - 11:00 AM

blackstone

Member

Member

118 posts

I use Acronis for backing up and had a question on the pros and cons of a back up as opposed to an image.
Let's say I had a hard drive crash. I'm guessing that an image would allow me to plug in my external and be up and going from the time of the last image.
My back ups are one full and a series of incrementals. Am I correct in assuming that I would need to restore to a drive and not be "plug and play?
Are there other advantages/disadvantages of one over the other?
Thank you for your help.
Merry Christmas
Larry

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pip22

Posted 23 December 2006 - 08:06 AM

When you create a disk/partition image, you have to 'restore' it to a partition before it's usable. It's not simply a case of accessing the image and Windows is running again.

Your second method, keeping full or incremental backups, is not an alternative to imaging a drive. They actually complement each other.
As I see it, you should use an imaging utility as insurance in case Windows or the disk it's on should screw up, since in either event the image will come to the rescue provided you saved it to a different disk.
The backup routine, however, is best for backing up your own files such as all My Documents contents.

blackstone

Posted 23 December 2006 - 08:32 AM

blackstone

Member

Topic Starter

Member

118 posts

Thank you for your response.
To clarify, neither option would give me a "plug and play" in the event of a hard drive failure?
An image is a "snapshot" of the whole drive at the time of the procedure and restoring it would result in putting everything back in place exactly as it was at that time?
A full back up accomplishes the same thing except it gives me an option to select files to restore which coule be some or all files?
It would be my desire that, in the event of a hard drive failure, to restore all files and go rather than reloading all my software and updating my settings.
Will either of these options accomplish this?
Sorry, but one additional question about System back up and restore.
Does Windows automatically back up periodically or is this a procedure that I need to initiate?
Thank you for your help.
Larry

pip22

Posted 23 December 2006 - 03:56 PM

"To clarify, neither option would give me a "plug and play" in the event of a hard drive failure?"

No. You would first have to run the restore process with whatever program created the backup or the image before you could boot into that copy of Windows.

"An image is a "snapshot" of the whole drive at the time of the procedure and restoring it would result in putting everything back in place exactly as it was at that time?"

Yes, after restoring, everything would be exactly as it was when the image was created.

"A full back up accomplishes the same thing except it gives me an option to select files to restore which coule be some or all files?"

You would still be able to select only certain files or folders from an image if that's all you need to do, provided you are able to run Windows, because Drive Image has a Windows feature called "Image Explorer" which allows you to do this. An ordinary backup program does not allow this as far as I know, so creating an image is the best option all round.

If you want to be able to restore an image with all your programs and settings intact, then you simply need to create an image AFTER all your programs are installed and your settings are in place. Of course, you need to be aware that such an image file will be considerably larger than one which is simply an image of a fresh, minimum Windows install with no other programs present.

"Does Windows automatically back up periodically or is this a procedure that I need to initiate?"

You need to perform backups regularly yourself if using the built-in Windows Backup, but you can download backup utilities which can be scheduled to perform backups automatically at specified times (provided you leave the PC running, of course). Just google "Automated Backup" to find these utilities. Windows only runs automatic backups of the Registry, and System Restore points are automatic too, but that won't back up anything except Windows system files.